Notes the paper: "Second place is for losers, and nobody wants to be a loser," said Bill Patzert, a meteorologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. "We had a wet fall, and we got drenched in the winter, but the rainfall in March, April, May and June was below normal."
This rain season, which ran from July 1 to June 30, ends with 37.25 inches falling at the National Weather Service monitoring station at USC. The wettest season on record was 1883-84, when 38.18 inches fell in downtown Los Angeles.
Angelenos hoping to burst the old record should have read up on Southern California rainmaker Charles M. Hatfield.
The folk hero was an Eagle Rock resident in 1915 when he was approached by San Diego officials to help fill the city's Morena Dam reservoir.
As recounted by sandiegohistory.org: He offered to provide rain free, then charge $1,000 per inch for anything between forty and fifty inches. All rain over fifty inches also would be free.
The city council, exchanging grins and a few nudges, based its four to-one vote on a $10,000 flat fee, payable when the reservoir filled up. Hatfield, with help from his younger brother Joel, built a twenty-foot tower base then added an eight-foot extension for his tanks and other paraphenalia next to Morena Dam, sixty miles east of San Diego. Early in the new year, smoke and fumes wafted upward, according to Shelley Higgins.
On January 10 it rained hard. Five days later it poured, and water kept falling for five more days.
Rising waters marooned a Santa Fe train just north of the city and sea launches rescued the passengers. More bridges washed away. Homes flooded. Someone at city hall decided this was too much too soon and tried calling Hatfield but the telephone lines were down, according to Lost Legends of the West, written by Brad Williams and Choral Pepper.
Some San Diegans blamed the floods on Hatfield -- but most scientists debunked Hatfield's supposed rainmaking abilities. The play and 1956 film "The Rainmaker" was loosely based on Hatfield, who eventually moved on to sell sewing machines in Glendale before his death in 1958.
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